went their ways. The wagons and mules, all save old Pickett, were sold
for the pitiful greenbacks that the profiteering few who had them, were
willing to pay, and old Pickett came home. A low-country freedman,
wishing to return to his habitat, kindly consented to ride her the two
hundred miles, cannily exchanging his fore-knowledge of the road for
the use of her four legs. And what a home-coming! The “big house” at
the head of the wide live-oak avenue lay in ruins, sentineled by the
tall, charred trunks of “Sherman’s laurels,” the two great magnolias
that sometime stood in their glossy green liveries overhanging the
hospitable hearths that once glowed within. Wildcats lurked in the
briar thickets now upsprung from the fertile soil where once stood
the great stables. The plantation quarters, whose streets formerly
resounded with jest and laughter, at the touch of the vandal’s torch
had flared into flame and vanished, and among their ashes Jimpson weed
and other rank growths struggled.
In a rough stable, hastily improvised of blackgum logs, Old Pickett was
introduced to strange, young Western mules, new to negro ways, but,
from the time of her home-coming, she seemed to grow resentful toward
all the world. While still performing her tasks faithfully, she would
not be hurried, and no freedman was ever able to urge her into a trot,
so, by example, if not by precept, the younger mules associated with
her gradually acquired somewhat of trickiness and of truculence. Old
Pickett still respected the former slave-holding planters, and under
one of these (she was a good saddle animal) she would still condescend
to canter, but the small white boy of ten or eleven years, and the
negroes of all ages, she held in utter contempt. Saddles and bridles
were scarce after the war, and spurs were rare. “The Captain” had a
single ante-bellum spur with which he urged recalcitrant horse or mule
to such bursts of speed as a grass diet would warrant. When rallied
by his hunting companions on his lack of the twin spur, he shrewdly
observed that if he could make one side of his steed travel fast enough
to suit him, the other could always be induced to go along, too. As
this precious tool was never loaned, the small boy who aspired to
equestrian exercise was forced to kick his steed in the ribs with his
bare heel, to which was sometimes tied, with a piece of hickory bark,
a forked stick shaped like a wishbone, usually an effective goad with
which to tickle the equine flank, but Old Pickett was unresponsive.
She was, in a manner of speaking, on all-fours with St. Paul. “None
of these things move me,” she thought--and they didn’t. The ambitious
boy who expressed a willingness to adventure a trip to the railway
station, two miles away, for the mail, only for the chance to ride, was
sometimes offered Old Pickett, just to chill his ardor. If he accepted
the mount, he was given a plow bridle, a folded crocus bag upon which
to sit, and was allotted a few hours in which to make the trip. A stout
switch was permitted him, which he carried in his right-hand for style,
rather than for any impression he hoped to make on Old Pickett’s tough
hide. Fortunately, the kindly amenities of war had left the great
avenue without a gate, or he could not have passed, as no amount of
urging could have brought Old Pickett within arm’s length of the latch,
so the way was clear to the old King’s Highway. The boy had plenty
of time to admire the scenery as Old Pickett walked sedately along
between the willow-fringed canals that flanked the approach to the
“Two Bridges.” In the summer, water snakes dropped quietly into their
element from the overhanging branches upon which they had been sunning
themselves, terrapins slid from their floating logs, and now and then
a small alligator sank slowly downward, leaving only his eyes above
the water. Just beyond, where the boughs of a grove of Spanish oaks
stretched above the road, squirrels sometimes played, alighting among
the smaller branches with a soft “swish” as they sprang from tree to
tree. Then, on to Jupiter Hill, or “Town Hill,” as the negroes called
it, because it lay in the direction of Charleston. Here, with a clay
hole on one side and a Colonial milestone on the other--“31 M. to C
Town” cut in its brown sandstone face--the roads forked, the right-hand
leading to the Village, the left to the station. Although Old Pickett’s
way always led to the station, she never failed to submit the selection
of the road to argument, and invariably leaned to the right. Whether
the memory of the brave, hopeful, early days of the Confederacy, when
she had drawn artillery or army wagons along this road, urged her to
tread again the once familiar paths, or whether she sought only to
match her will and her wits against the boy’s, one may not know, but,
as far as the boy was concerned, the discipline was wholesome, for
loss of temper availed nothing against Old Pickett. Her response to
an application of the switch was to sidle up to the nearest tree or
sapling, against which she would rub her rider’s bare legs, so she
was seldom switched. Sometimes the boy would sit on her back ten or
fifteen minutes without moving, while she drowsed and dreamed of the
past, and then, when, perhaps, she had forgotten the dispute between
them, he would get her started in the way she should go. At other
times, however, when she could not be wheedled out of the Village road,
her rider let her have her way, and, after going two or three hundred
yards, would slowly turn her head into the pineland and, gradually
sweeping around in a wide semi-circle to the left, would reenter
the road to the station a quarter of a mile beyond. Arrived at his
destination, the boy would be fortunate to find some idle negro around
who would bring out the mail to him, for, once dismounted, he could not
remount without assistance, Old Pickett invariably backing her ears,
baring her teeth, and altogether turning toward him “an unforgiving
eye and a damned disinheriting countenance.” To grown-ups Old Pickett
was dangerous only at the rear, but to a dismounted boy she was loaded
at both ends and--a revolver at that--she was so pivoted that head and
tail could swap places with surprising facility. Old Pickett’s tracks
on her way home, however, were the prints of peace. Like so many of the
human race, she knew the way to the trough, and thither she was willing
to be guided.
On Sundays, Old Pickett was turned into the big pasture with the other
mules, for rest and recreation, but, while her companions galloped
or trotted and played, she kept away from them, grazing alone until
satisfied, when, withdrawing to a far corner of the field, and resting
her head upon the rider of the rail fence, she would gaze into space
with retrospective eyes. Sometimes the Sunday outings would be in
cornfields after harvest, where the slovenly freedmen usually left
bunches of rank-growing sheep burrs, having a strong affinity for the
manes and tails of horses and mules. Of these, Old Pickett acquired
her share. The negro who plowed her extracted without difficulty those
which lodged in her mane, but the taking of them out of her tail was
an event in stableyard circles. Strongly tethered in her stall with a
short halter, a stout bar was run into grooves behind her, so hampering
her hindquarters that she could not extend herself. Thus helpless, she
was ignominiously despoiled of the burrs that clung to her tail, even
the small black boys participating in the spoliation, of which they did
not fail to brag later to their companions at the quarters.
“You see dis sheep buhr, enty? Uh tek’um out’uh Ole Pickett’ tail,”
said one, proudly pulling a burr out of the wool about his ears.
“No, you nebbuh! You duh Gawd fuh projick ’long Old Pickett’ tail? ’E
yent come out’um!”
“’E yiz, now!”
“’E yent!”
“’E yiz!”
“’E yent!” and then they fought.
Besides the burrs acquired by her mane and tail, Old Pickett sometimes
got them in her ears, and then a circus act was necessary to get the
bridle over her head in the morning.
One summer afternoon, crook-legged, yellow Sabey came up to the house
to borrow a mule with which to drag from a distant backwater a large
alligator he had just killed, offering to recompense the favor by
bringing a portion of the creature’s oily flesh to be cooked for the
always hungry hounds. As all the other farm animals were busy, Sabey
was told that he might have Old Pickett, who grazed alone in a distant
pasture. Not knowing Old Pickett intimately, the poor darkey scraped
his foot gratefully, and taking a bridle from the rack, an ear of
corn from the crib and a bundle of fodder from the stack, he set out
as gaily and as full of faith as the small boy who, receiving from an
elder his first handful of “fresh salt,” goes forth in quest of the
elusive robin’s tail. Arrived at the pasture, Sabey shambled toward Old
Pickett, holding the ear of corn and the blades coaxingly before him.
The bridle was hidden from sight at his back, tied to a hickory bark
suspender. As Sabey approached, though he looked like no Greek that
ever walked, or fought, or ran, Old Pickett, appraising the provender
as camouflage and fearing even the Gullah bearing gifts, raised her
head and looked at him suspiciously, but, as Sabey slowed down his
pace and called “coab, coab, coab” softly and appealingly, she let him
come up to her and condescended to nibble at the outstretched handful
of blades. The negro’s favorite method of catching a loose mule is to
seize her firmly by the ear, and to this Old Pickett, without an earful
of sheep burrs, might have submitted, but, as Sabey grabbed, the sharp
burrs were pressed so painfully into the inner lining of her ear, that
she wheeled as quick as a flash and, lashing out with heels that had
lost none of their youthful vigor, would have lifted Sabey into the
air had he not with quick presence of mind thrown himself flat on the
ground, so that she kicked over him. When the immediate danger had
passed, Sabey rose to his feet and followed her about the pasture for
two hours, in the vain effort to coax her again within reach, or to
drive her into a fence corner, where he might, by getting a rail behind
her, so pen her up that the bridle could be slipped over her head
without danger. But Old Pickett could neither be led nor driven, and,
just as the sun was setting, Sabey returned alone to the house.
“Mas’ Rafe, uh bin ketch cootuh een me time, uh bin ketch alligettuh,
but uh yent fuh ketch no t’unduh en’ no lightnin’, en’ da’ t’ing oonuh
call Ole Pickett, him duh t’unduh en’ lightnin’ _alltwo one time_! Uh
gone een de pastuh en’ alltwo me han’ full’up wid bittle fuh da’ mule
fuh eat. Uh hab uh kin’ feelin’ een me h’aa’t fuh da’ mule ’tell uh
fin’um out, but now, uh nebbuh fuh trus’um ’gen no mo’! Mas’ Rafe, da’
mule ’ceitful ez uh ’ooman! ’E nyam de bittle out me han’, en’ w’en uh
graff ’e yez fuh ketch’um, please Gawd, ’e head en’ ’e yez gone, en’
me han’ duh graff ’e two hin’ foot! Uh nebbuh see shishuh swif’ hin’
foot lukkuh da’ mule got. Ef me Jedus didn’ bin tell me fuh fall flat
’puntop me belly, sukkuh alligettuh, uh would’uh dead; but w’en uh do
dat, een Gawd’ mussy, de mule kick obuh me, en’ de du’t en’ t’ing wuh
’e kick up out de pastuh, gone ’way up een de ellyment, en’ w’en ’e
fall ’puntop me ’e kibbuh me up same lukkuh dem t’row du’t ’puntop’uh
man een ’e grabe! Mas’ Rafe, uh tengkful fuh you fuh len’ me da’ mule
fuh ride, but ’fo’ uh try fuh ketch’um ’gen, uh redduh walk on me han’
en’ me foot frum yuh _spang_ Caw Caw Swamp!”
Old Pickett had now passed her twenty-fifth year, and day by day
became sadder and wiser. She accepted her daily tasks with resignation,
but not with enthusiasm. The sockets above her weary eyes grew deeper,
and white hairs thickened among the tawny pelage about her brow. Her
ears, once so erect and responsive to all the sounds of the world about
her, now flopped dejectedly like an unstarched “cracker” sunbonnet.
Her lips, as pendulous as those of the bull moose that once tried to
bite the Faunal Naturalist, hung lower and lower, and the hour drew
near when she must shuffle off the mortal harness she had worn so long.
Her eyes had looked upon smiling Peace, upon grim War, and--under
Reconstruction, the once proud planters on foot and their quondam
slaves on horseback--it was time to go. Turned out in the pasture to
spend her last days in idleness, she walked listlessly about, cropping
here and there a bunch of tender grass, while she waited for the
summons. When it came, and she lay down to rise no more, a black spot,
slowly circling in the sky, stooped, and, on a lower level, sailed
again in narrowing circles. The keen eyes of other questing vultures,
miles away, watched the drop, and followed. From the four corners of
the heavens they came, and, alighting on rail fence and blasted pine,
or hovering low on shadowy wings, they watched and waited, until at
last Old Pickett’s glazing eyes told them that her heart and her heels
were stilled forever.
A month or two later in the Autumn, when the family returned to the
plantation from the pineland village, the boy indignantly reproached
the negroes for not having given Old Pickett decent sepulture, and two
of them were induced to gather up her whitened bones and bury them
in a shallow grave at the edge of the ante-bellum “horse burying
ground,” where the old family horses rested under the live-oaks. The
negroes could not understand the boy’s emotion as the clods fell on the
bones of the faithful old mule. “Eh, eh, buckruh boy too commikil. Him
duh cry ’cause mule dead!” They did not know that the passing of Old
Pickett severed a link with the golden past, and that into her grave
went something of The Lost Cause!
THE LOST BUCK
An hour after sunrise, hunters and pack assembled at the appointed
rendezvous, a centrally situated plantation. There was the usual
exchange of pleasant badinage as to the relative speed, stamina
and other qualities of the different hounds, who, now united in an
imposing pack of twenty, combined almost every type known to the deer
hunter, and each had its admirers. The older men preferred the native
low-country stock, a blend, perhaps, of the blood of fox hound and
beagle, bred for a hundred years or more from dogs brought from England
long, long ago. These were fine, high-bred looking animals, mostly
“blue speckled,” flecked with patches of black and fawn, whose twisted
ears, soft as velvet, were long enough to tie under their wearers’
throats--very aristocrats of the dog world, from their long muzzles
to the tips of their slender “rat” tails, not very fast, perhaps, but
with noses so “cold” that they could follow a deer trail more than
twenty-four hours old. Then, too, their cry! “Rolling tongues,” all of
them, sweet and sonorous, whose blending of deep and high-pitched tones
sent the blood tingling through the veins. The hard-riding youngsters,
however, preferred the recently imported “English” dogs--thick-set,
powerful creatures, white, with great patches of black and tan,
broad-eared and “feather-tailed.” Their noses were not cold, nor was
the music of their yelping “chopped” tongues inspiring, but they had
great speed, and their feet were so hard that they could be run day
after day without becoming footsore. Here and there, a somber spot in
the pack, was a black and tan and--a touch of flame--a big “red-bone”
of a western North Carolina strain, a rangy fellow, bred to speed
and endurance in a rough, red-fox country. So each type and each
individual had special qualities and special advocates, and all were
gathered--Countess, Echo, Music, Harper, Lead, Luck, Modoc, Rowser,
Blueman, the panther-like Huntress, and many younger dogs--into a pack
whose all-round efficiency could not have been matched between Ashley
River and the tawny waters of the Savannah!
At last the horns were sounded, and horsemen and hounds passed up the
Cypress road. Soon after crossing the two bridges a mile or so away,
a short consultation was had, and the “Elliott Big Drive” was decided
upon. The elder huntsmen directed the standers to their positions and,
after allowing sufficient time for those who had been assigned the more
distant passes to reach their stands, the two expert and daring riders
who had been designated as the “drivers” put in the eager pack and they
spread fanlike among the myrtles.
The old buck, whose trophies were the special object of this day’s
hunt, had long baffled the Nimrods of the neighborhood. Unusually large
and with a magnificent head of “basket” horns, his resourcefulness had
always enabled him to escape his pursuers. He varied his tactics as
occasion required. In the early fall and winter, while lying with does
and yearlings in the myrtles, or on the sunny side of some broomgrass
field, he would cunningly keep his place upon the approach of hounds
and hunters, allowing his companions to spring up and lead the cry off
on a long run for the river. Then, when the danger was over, he would
sneak away and take sanctuary in some distant thicket. Later on, in
February and March, when the bucks, having dropped their horns, herded
together like timid sheep, he pursued the same course, allowing the
younger and less experienced to “jump” at the approach of the pack
and lead it away while he remained in safety. In his bachelor days,
however, he changed his methods, and, at the first cry of a distant
dog opening upon the trail, the wary buck would “sneak,” and, by the
time the pack reached his erstwhile bed, they found only the outline of
his burly body in the petticoat grass where he had made his luxurious
couch, while the old fellow would be perhaps six or seven miles away
in the Ti Ti across the Edisto, or in some remote and inaccessible
fastness beyond the Toogoodoo. In summer, when his great antlers in
the “velvet” were tender and sensitive to the slightest touch of twig
or foliage, he avoided thickets and tangled places, skirting the
ridges that rose like shoulders on either side of the narrow bays that
intersected the great forests of long-leaf pine.
But on this crisp November day, the woods were clean and clear, with
no tangle of summer foliage, and the big buck, now carrying iron-hard
horns, was as free to run through swamp or thicket as on the higher
knolls and ridges, and, cunning and deceitful, he changed his tactics
from chase to chase, and kept his pursuers guessing as to whether he
would “jump” or “sneak,” whether his course would be east, south or
west. Northward he never ran, for thither lay the railway and the flat
woods, with no rivers beyond whose waters lay sanctuary.
One of the standers, well-mounted, took up a distant pass at Elliott’s
Wells, the site of a settlement abandoned many generations ago.
Concealing his horse in a thicket at the rear of the stand, he returned
to the knoll, stood in front of a great pine, a giant among its lofty
fellows, and listened for the cry of the pack. But listening was
difficult and no cry came to his ears. The wind was high, and, singing
among the pine tops like æolian harps, rose and swelled and softened
and died away, now whispering of the wold with its peaceful sheep,
and quiet meadows where cattle grazed, now thundering of stormswept
mountain tops and the break of ocean surges on rockbound coasts, and
again softened to the lap of sluggish wavelets on the shining shores
of placid bays, and sighing told of those that grieved, and shrieked
with the anguish of those that suffered, and softened again with the
laughter of little children, and told the myriad stories and waked the
thousand memories that the weird and mysterious songs of the wind among
the pines bring to those whose hearts are attuned to nature. More than
once the stander stood at attention, thinking he heard the cry of a
distant hound, but, with a lull in the wind, the aural will-o’-the-wisp
was gone, so misleading are the wind-sounds to even the trained ear. An
hour passed. Two hours--but only the wind was heard, no bay of dog, no
blast of horn betraying the presence of hunter or hound anywhere in the
great expanse of forest.
Not far away was an old graveyard, one of the Colonial villages of
the dead occasionally found in the low-country forests. The lettering
on the marble slabs that covered the eternal sleepers revealed them
as members of important families, many of them children who died of
fever during the summer months before the days of quinine, deep wells
and wire screens. The stander, while listening for the cry of the
pack, read the lichen-covered inscriptions on the tombs and mused
like Gray and Omar. With a whimsical smile, he looked at the towering
crown of a great water-oak deep-rooted in the mould of a stout-hearted
17th century squire--a “five-bottle man” perhaps, and marveled at the
alchemy of nature that could, from Madeira, Port and old Jamaica Rum,
resolve a dew to nourish a Water Oak! Then, with ineffable sadness, he
read the brief life-stories of God’s little children, “Mary,” “Anne,”
“William,” “beloved daughter,” “beloved son” “of ---- and ---- his
wife,” “died August 171-,” “died September 172-.” A cherub deep-carved
in the marble, the line “Suffer little children to come unto Me”--no
more! Seven, eight generations of men and women had lived their lives
and passed since these little children were taken home 200 years ago!
Yet, how near the tragedy seemed! The father returning from field
or forest to find the mother in agony over the stricken child, no
doctor, no ice, no effective medicines. The brilliant eyes, the burning
cheeks, delirium, the end. The little mound in the woodland, wet with a
mother’s tears, the graver’s chisel in the marble--and that was all. So
men and women lived, and little children died--two hundred years ago!
At the end of the fourth hour of waiting, the stander, hearing only the
wind-harps among the pine-tops, and realizing that, either the pack
had jumped and been led by the chase out of the drive--a cunning old
buck sometimes running contrary to all precedent--or that, striking
no trail, the drivers had “blown out” of the Big Drive and called the
hunt together for exploitation elsewhere, mounted his horse and rode
due west through the woods for the Willtown road, which, running north
and south, and nearly parallel with the Edisto and its tributary Penny
Creek, would be crossed by any deer making for the river. Just as he
reached the road, he accosted a negro walking toward Parker’s Ferry
X-Roads, and asked if he had heard horns or hounds.